Levels: The Host Read Free

Now he was out for himself. And for his passion.
    Mothering.

PART ONE
    THE SETUP
    The me is a movable thing.
    – Watly Caiper

CHAPTER 1
    T hump thump thump.
    He was a real pig of a man. Size of a house, with little tufts of black and gray hair peeking from each nostril. The sign in front of his desk said his name was Mr. Oldyer and that he was Examination Five.
    Thump thump thump.
    Oldyer. Ol-die-yer. That’s how the clerk had pronounced it. Ol-die-yer. Rhymes with mold buyer .
    Thump thump thump.
    He had no hair to speak of except for that nose stuff and, Watly suspected, an ugly mat of it all down his back. He didn’t just look fat, he looked bloated—inflated, pumped up with fluid or jelly or something. His eyes seemed almost buried amid little puffs and folds of extra lumpy flesh. The two thick lids looked permanently bruised. And beneath it all—beneath these pinkish flaps and lumps—two glistening pupils could still be seen. They watched coldly and aloofly, with that special mixture of hatred and condescension that always appears when one gives a little scrap of power to a little scrap of a mind.
    Watly shifted from his left foot to his right.
    Thump thump thump.
    Mr. Oldyer hadn’t said one word yet. He just sat and stared at Watly, thumping that No. 2 pencil proudly on his plasticore desktop. A real wood pencil like that must’ve cost him a full week’s pay, Watly thought. He’s really showing it off.
    Thump thump thump.
    Watly wished he could think of something to say—something witty or sarcastic. A quip. Where the hell was a quip when you needed it most? Needed it for your own sanity. Watly’s brain was dry. This Mr. Oldyer—this unapproachable building of a man—stood between Watly Caiper and his future. This was it. Watly didn’t want to blow it. Not now. Not after coming this far.
    Thump thump thump.
    Even before the enormous man finally broke down and spoke, Watly suspected this was the kind of guy who could make every word in existence a curse. Watly braced himself for it. Everything this man would say was going to sound like an obscenity. And curses—rape, bolehole, subspawn—would sound worse than ever slipping from this man’s sloppy flesh wound of a mouth.
    But nice, positive words—good words—would be tainted with fatty toxins. Words like pretty, happy, wonderful, kind would be corrupted when spewed from those two lopsided lips. Even wholesome, positive words like fuck would end up tainted. Fuckhead, fuckable, fuckface —all would sound like bad things instead of good when they escaped from this blubber-puss.
    Watly stared at Oldyer’s mouth. He remembered hearing once about how in ancient pre-Cede time, pre-history, the word fuck was indeed considered a curse: something harsh, something one couldn’t say in polite company. Whereas, back then, rape was not considered a curse word at all. Pretty strange, that. It was like they had everything backward in those days.
    Thump thump thump.
    Mr. Oldyer broke his stare and turned his massive head down to look at the papers on his desk. The facial blubber trembled for a moment and then the man laid his pencil carefully before him. No more thumping. There was a palpable release of tension. Watly exhaled slowly through his teeth and focused on the toes of his shoes.
    “Watly Caiper, huh?” Four swinging jowls shuddered with the impact of speech on Oldyer’ s face.
    The brown half-walls of the small office seemed to close in around Watly. He felt as if something was tightening around his neck—pressing, squeezing. Yes, Watly had been right. This man made even Watly’s own name sound like an obscenity.
    “Yes, sir. That’ s me.”
    “Come a long way, haven’t you, Caiper?” the big man said in a monotone.
    Watly smiled but kept his mouth shut, not sure what was expected of him. It hadn’t sounded like a question. What do you want, fat man? Tell me and I’ll give it to you.
    “You’ve passed through four examinations and two